I’m having a problem with my XEROX C7030 printer after upgrading from 20.04 LTS to 24.04. Xerox has a .deb driver package that offers some additional features over the CUPS printing capabilities.
To use the Xerox driver, the xeroxofficeprtmgr utility is used to set up a print queue, which adds a printer that uses the Xerox driver.
On 20.04, when using the Xerox driver, a system print dialog with very limited options would appear, and after clicking “Print” in that dialog, the dialog from the Xerox driver package would appear to offer additional functionality.
On 24.04, the dialog from the Xerox driver package no longer appears. Instead, the job prints immediately after"Print" is clicked in the limited system print dialog.
I have removed/reinstalled the Xerox deb driver. I have removed/recreated the print queue with xeroxofficeprtmgr, but that didn’t help either. There is a check box in the Xerox driver setup to disable the user interface, but I have that unchecked, as I did previously.
I’m not a commercial customer and I don’t have a support contract, so it is virtually impossible to get support from Xerox. Also, they don’t seem to support the Linux driver very well.
So, just looking for any suggestions. CUPS printing does work for most things. And there was a bug in 20.04 CUPS with this printer that might be fixed now (I have to do further research), so that helps a bit.
Actually, it appears that the printing system is using the Xerox driver. If I setup the Xerox printer queue defaults beforehand using xeroxofficeprtmgr with “different” settings, like printing duplex from Tray 4, those settings are obeyed when the job is printed. These settings are not offered in the limited system print dialog that appears. Somehow, the per-job Xerox dialog is now suppressed.
Unfortunately, when using IPP/driverless printing, the C7030 does not expose photo-quality printing mode, only standard and enhanced (I used ipptool to see what the C7030 exposes). Also, while the C7030 does expose all of its media input trays, CUPS does not seem to pick those up, and I can’t select input source when using driverless printing. I can get to these features using CUPS with a PPD, or the Xerox driver.
Enabling maximum logging in the Xerox driver reveals that there appears to be a problem with GTK that causes the driver to revert to printing without showing the user interface.
Is there some tool that might reveal why GTK is failing? In Windows, I could use procmon to watch xeroxofficedriver and it would show every operation that the driver would try (i.e. opening files, accessing DLL libraries), and could help identify what library call is failing. What would be the best tool to do this in Ubuntu? I tried Procmon for Linux and Sysmon for Linux, but they don’t seem to log that type of information.
I opened up the deb package file and took a look at the file DEBIAN/postinst, as well as took a look at the driver install log.
In DEBIAN\postinst, there was a command xhost +si:localuser:lp >> /tmp/PrtDrvInstaller.log 2>> /tmp/PrtDrvInstaller.log || echo 'Failed to grant lp xhost permissions' 1>> /tmp/PrtDrvInstaller.log
The install log had the error Failed to grant lp xhost permissions, so I ran that command manully with sudo. The command succeeded, but the Xerox print dialog still did not appear.
In DEBIAN\postinst, there was also a command env | grep -w DISPLAY > opt/XeroxOffice/prtsys/.xp_disp
but the created file .xp_disp was empty. I edited .xp_disp and added the output of the env command, which was DISPLAY=:1
After that, the Xerox print dialog appeared, and I was able to use that dialog to adjust printer settings.
So, I don’t know for sure if both changes were necessary, but it seems that certainly fixing .xp_disp was needed.
very much helpful but still not working for me on any distro (even though I had the xdisp issue). Fresh install. How did you enable maximum logging in the Xerox driver? Issues I’m facing:
if I launch prtmgr as a user I get to… the phonebook. If I launch it as root on top right I have 2 icons (I’ve seen on other screenshots there should be 3: i’m missing the phonebook and I don’t care at all if that’s just that:) ).
problem being: printer don’t get detected automatically and don’t print if added manually (and the icon stays generic).
Same problem with both Phaser 7500 and WC7830; PopOs 22.40, fedora 41, Debian 11 and 12. Printers are detected by driverless (have to force IPP 1.1 for the phaser 7500) and CUPS (WSD)
edit: I guess it’s xeroxofficelogmgr All
but nothing new under the hood
root@pop-os:/tmp# tail -f XeroxOfficeprtmgr.log
04:52:38 AM - ERROR/Translations: Missing translation: "Exit Printer Manager Application"
04:52:38 AM - ERROR/Translations: Missing translation: "Close Install Printers Dialog"
04:52:38 AM - ERROR/Translations: Missing translation: "Save Fax Phonebook"
04:52:38 AM - ERROR/Translations: Missing translation: "Close Fax Phonebook Dialog"
04:52:38 AM - ERROR/Networking: Initializing SNMP library
No log handling enabled - turning on stderr logging
Cannot find module (SNMPv2-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
Cannot find module (SNMPv2-SMI): At line 0 in (none)
Cannot find module (SNMP-VIEW-BASED-ACM-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
Cannot find module (SNMP-COMMUNITY-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
when I click on OK to add the printer one row adds to the log:
04:55:17 AM - GUI: GTKTools::UpdateFeatureFromWidget(): No driver feature associated with GTKObject “DiscoveredPrintersButton”.
Just for reference, I am running Xerox driver version 5.20.661.4684.
I run the Xerox utilities from the folder where they are installed, switching to that folder with the command cd /opt/XeroxOffice/prtsys. The driver may be installed in a different place in other distros. I have observed some errors if I don’t run the utilities from that folder.
The driver install creates some links. For example,
jhuber@t5610:~$ which xeroxofficeprtmgr
/usr/bin/xeroxofficeprtmgr
which is a shell script
jhuber@t5610:~$ cat /usr/bin/xeroxofficeprtmgr
#!/bin/sh
##########################################################################
## ##
## Copyright (C) 2011 by Xerox Corp. All rights reserved. ##
## ##
##########################################################################
cd /opt/XeroxOffice/prtsys
exec /opt/XeroxOffice/prtsys/xeroxofficeprtmgr $* 2> /tmp/XeroxOfficeprtmgr.log
However, I get permission errors if I just run sudo xeroxofficeprtmgr from the command line.
If you are coming from an earlier version of the driver, there are some changes in this version. As you have noted, you must use sudo ./xeroxofficeprtmgr to open printer queue management, otherwise you get phonebook management.
Also, this version of the driver is completely generic; there are no printer-specific drivers included, so the icon stays generic, and you have to configure all the printer features manually. I had to add my printer manually.
This is what I get when I click the double-down-arrow icon:
I am able to print with no issues once the printer is added.
My printer only has one output tray. I don’t see any options in the dialog to select output tray. I also don’t see any options in the Edit Printer (3-line icon button)>Queue Preferences…>Configuration>Installable Options… to set up the output trays. It could be that the driver communicates with the printer to determine what should be available for configuration. Under CUPS, I have no option for output trays.
For other settings, the printer obeys all the choices I make in the Xerox print dialog.
I believe that these are the printers/queues created by the Xerox driver. The first screenshot is from GNOME settings and the second is from system-config-printer.
hi, sorry for the radio silence and thanks again for your help. Fast forward: I’m currently able to print using the Xerox driver but it’s still missing stuff:
trays’ paper type/size is not detected from the printer (but manual input tray selection works)
there is no option to select output tray
it is not possible to select print quality: everything is printed in standard (draft) quality and this is really a blocking point.
nr 3 is not and issue on the phaser 7500 as (default) print quality can be selected through the web interface:
I can accept not anyhing can be as automated as in Windows (like the driver reading which paper is loaded in the trays and showing available choices accordingly when selecting paper type/size, etc.) but not being able to select print quality or the output tray seems a ridiculous drawback given this driver is meant to support printers/copiers worth thousands of $.
The fact that the driver allows (requires?) to specify how many trays there can mean 2 things: 1) it’s not designed to get the info from the printer 2) the driver should read from the printer but not being able to do so, it provides an option to manually tell.
still, I keep getting SNMP errors in xeroxofficeprtmgr.log:
Cannot find module (SNMPv2-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
Cannot find module (SNMPv2-SMI): At line 0 in (none)
Cannot find module (SNMP-VIEW-BASED-ACM-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
Cannot find module (SNMP-COMMUNITY-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
even though everything seems to be fine: an snmpget is able to communicate with the printer using the SNMPv2-MIB module: SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: Xerox WorkCentre 7830 v1; SS 075.010.004.07810, NC 075.014.07810, UI 075.014.07810, ME 090.032.010, CC 075.014.07810, DF 012.003.000, FI ------, FA 003.012.005, CCOS 075.004.07810, NCOS 075.004.07810, SC 004.001.000, SU 075.014.07810
any idea will be welcome. I’m trying to give up Windows and this is the last thing I need to fix in order to so, hence my bit of frustration
I understand the frustration. Unfortunately, the Linux driver provided by Xerox seems to be a hack/afterthought, and appears to receive little internal support at Xerox.
This is totally my speculation…the Xerox printer driver queries the printer for features, and some aspects of that communication are broken now in more recent Linux versions, so the driver doesn’t get information on all the features. Thus, the Xerox driver is missing drop down boxes for resolution and output tray, that you would normally see in the Xerox Windows driver.
For my C7030, the Xerox PPD contains all of the features of the printer. When setting up CUPS with the PPD, nearly all of the features are picked up. Unfortunately, CUPS has an annoying long-running bug with Xerox printers for a feature I use. If I select 2 pages per side, CUPS prints 4 pages per side; if I select 4 pages per side, I get 8 pages per side, etc. n-up printing works fine in the Xerox driver. CUPS also takes a long time to print, even for simple text. I don’t know if it is rendering everything to graphics, or what is going on.
And as I noted above, for whatever reason, My C7030 only exposes a limited set of features through IPP/driverless printing, which makes this the least useful option.
So, depending on what I need to print, I use CUPS , or the Xerox driver, and for really complex jobs, I have a VirtualBox Windows 10 VM that I can fire up to use the Xerox Windows Postscript drivers.